1856 Temperance Whiskey Riot – Princeton Indiana (PART #2 /3)

September 21, 2019

THE DELPHI JOURNAL, DELPHI INDIANA, WEDNESDAY MORNING MAY 21 1856

More Liquor Spilling.

The Princeton Clarion, whose account of the destruction of the doggeries in that place, a couple of weeks ago, by the women, we copied recently, says that on Monday week another descent was made by the ladies on a lot of liquor stored in the Railroad Depot. They opened the doors, rolled out a barrel of whiskey and another of beer, knocked the heads out, and gave the contents a free run into the gutter. The liquor had been brought on for the purpose of replacing some destroyed at one of the lowest doggeries on the occasion of the first foray. The special friends of the unfortunate owner revenged themselves by daubing tar on the front doors of the Presbyterian, Covenanters, and Methodist Churches, and on Temperance Hall. They also painted a poor old cow belonging to Rev. Mr. Walker, one the the clergyman of the place. Daubing up churches and painting preacher’s cows is the latest, but a thoroughly legitimate, development of “old lineism”. When John L. Robinson began a crusade against the preachers, because they held the views he advocated to be productive of immorality, and the whole “old line” party followed, in spite of the warnings of Wm. J. Brown, he led off in the path that ran directly to the consequences above noticed. Further back in the same road, but inevitably tending to the same point, was the conduct of Mr. Douglas who petitioned Congress against the infamous Nebraska Bill. What wonder, when the leaders of a party make Religion and its ministers the butt of ridicule and abuse, that their besotted followers should make its temples the sport of drunken malice and filthy mischief? The conduct of both extremes is perfectly consistent. There is nothing in the lowest manifestation that cannot trace its roots to the highest. – Star Journal